Incubating - one egg not dehydrating - help!

[Duck Hill]

I am incubating duck eggs, multistage in a Hovabator incubator. Everything is going well and all fertile eggs are growing well. Tomorrow is 21 days for five of my eggs.

I draw pencil lines weekly at the edge of the air space. I do so while holding a flashlight to the egg so I can see the exact place where the edge of the air space is. I have drawn the original air space (quite small), the one week and the two week air spaces. I see the space growing throughout the week and I mark it on Saturday.

ONE egg has not dehydrated at all for a whole week. All the other eggs in the incubator were dehydrating fine except for that ONE egg. A few days ago I dropped the humidity level from about 65% to about 55% just to help that one egg. All the other eggs are dehydrating faster than before and show greater growth in their air space (within good norms). But that one egg still isn't dehydrating at all! The edge of the air cell is exactly where it was a week ago. Not almost the same place, exactly the same place.

During weeks 1 and 2 this egg dehydrated slightly less than the others, but not dramatically so.

Now, during week 3 it has just quit dehydrating completely. The air space is staying exactly where it was last Saturday and it's been a whole week. All the other eggs show an air space that has grown considerably.

The egg does contain a live duckling that moves around normally, the same as the other ducklings. I candle each day and all ducklings in the five eggs move around and are active when candled. Except for the tiny air space that is way too small for 21 days, the egg looks completely normal.

I have tried washing the egg several times in tap water to try to increase the porosity of the shell. I have been afraid to try soap or bleach, so as to not hurt the duckling, but I am really worried as tomorrow is day 21 and this one egg has almost no airspace compared to the other eggs. Only one week left and there isn't enough air space for this duckling.

What should I do? I can drop the humidity a bit more, but I'm not sure that would help. The air space has not grown AT ALL during the past week.

Any ideas? Help!

 

[Duck Hill]

I was right... and wrong... to worry. The duckling did need to reach air. But the size of the air sack didn't matter, because the duckling was up-side-down in the egg!!! It could not reach the air sack no matter its size. So the smart duckling did the right thing and found air through the shell!

This egg was incubated correctly with the air sack right-side-up in an automatic-turning incubator.

You will all be proud of me. When I got home and found the shell cracked, the only thing I did was to put the egg back in the incubator, in the hatching section (flat instead of top-up). After a while a few pieces of shell came off, but the membrane had no hole. Again, I sat on my hands.

Now, the next morning, the beak is out! Hurrah!!! This is day 26. A bit early. So I will continue to sit on my hands, as I understand the duckling may just need air and may not be ready to actually come out yet.

Yayyyyyy! Hurrahhhhh! Go duckling go!!!!!

 

[caesargirl]

I'd agree to lowering your humidity. What are your stats? Humidity and temp?

 

[caesargirl]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...rly-march-2016-hatch-a-long/240#post_16609157

Here's a thread of people in the middle of hatching now....

 

[Duck Hill]

Thank you all very much for your suggestions and support. I will try to get a picture tonight.

As stated above, I washed the eggs in very slightly soapy water with a slight amount of bleach (rinsing immediately) to reduce the bloom so that more moisture could get out through the shell. I reduced the humidity to about 50%. Over several days this seemed to have very little effect. On Saturday (day 21) I weighed all my eggs. My four "good" eggs had dehydrated about 4-6 % (by weight), which is too low. The "non-dehydrating egg" had dehydrated only about 2%. While washing the eggs I noticed that the bloom was thick and did not fully get removed by the washing. I figured that it is clogging the pores.

For the one egg that wasn't dehydrated at all I gently used fine sandpaper to take away the bloom that I guessed was blocking the pores of the egg. As soon as I removed the outermost covering (starting within a few minutes and finishing within about an hour) the air sack grew a small but significant amount (about 1/8 of an inch). This supports my guess that the pores were blocked, particularly on the air sack end. There was a negative pressure inside the egg, because the air sack could not fill as the rest of the egg dehydrated - this stopped dehydration. As soon as the pores were opened air entered the air sack and it grew a bit. After about an hour the pressure clearly stabilized (the air sack stopped growing) and since then the egg has resumed very slowly dehydrating. The duckling inside is still alive, sometimes showing movement, though now it's late enough in the development to be really hard to see. My incubator is extremely clean, as it is new and as the eggs were cleaned, so I don't anticipate issues with bacteria in spite of having removed the bloom.

At this point I'm guessing that my duck was too good at coating her eggs with bloom - and that this prevented them from dehydrating properly. With the lower humidity and the removal of the coating on the non-dehydrating egg, all five eggs are now dehydrating at a rate that probably would have been proper had they done so from day 1. Since there are only four days till lockdown, I know the eggs won't have reached the proper 12% or so dehydration. My optimistic guess is that they will be at 7-10%, with the non-dehydrating egg perhaps reaching 5%, with luck.

After that I will have to increase humidity for lockdown - particularly if one has pipped.

Any suggestions? (Other than "hands off"?)

 

[Duck Hill]

Here is the eggceptional undehydrating egg.

1- The first, round line is the air cell at the start of incubation.

2- The second line is the end of week 1.

3- The third line is Saturday at the end of week 2 and continued unchanged all of that week for seven days till Saturday at the end of week 3 with NO change, in spite of washing and lowered humidity!!! No difference at all in seven days, exact same line.

4- The fourth line is a single day later, after I lightly sanded the bloom off the air cell end of the egg and also a little bit in a few other spots. Now it has been two days since then and the egg has only dehydrated a small, normal extra amount since I drew that fourth line (I'll draw one last line on day 26, just before they go into lockdown).

I think the pores of the egg were sufficiently blocked so that air could not get into the air cell. I also think that this, in turn, created a negative pressure inside the egg, which prevented the egg from dehydrating normally.

There was still enough air exchange in the duckling part of the egg, because the duckling is still alive and moving around! Just in case, though, I did sand a few spots lightly to make sure the duckling would continue to have enough oxygen.

Overall, the egg is still behind the others in dehydration, but it is now more within what might be a natural variation around the expected weight. I therefore hope that this duckling will be born healthy. I will update with the dehydration percentage of my eggs on lockdown day - day 26, right?

I want to say a big thank you for everyone who has supported me in this thread. I haven't finished reading the latest references, though I have read all the prior ones. I appreciate all your help!

 

[Duck Hill]

Day 24:

Two eggs have pipped internally!

My two best-dehydrated eggs have pipped internally. The other three are waiting a bit longer, which is perfect. All five are moving!

You can watch the duckling beak inside one of these two eggs on:

 

[Duck Hill]

Update 3/6/18

My friend has experimented with a clutch raised by her own runner ducks. The natural humidity was way lower than what I kept in the incubator. As a result her eggs dehydrated much more than mine. This resulted in much smaller ducklings. And her ducklings...with room in the egg ... were able to turn around in their egg in order to hatch on their own.

 

[Amiga]

I am not a hatcher, but I have read ducklings can shrink wrap with too low humidity. I cannot tag from this device, so try tagging Lacrystol, Orca5094 sumi

And try Miss Lydia - she can maybe think of some more hatchers.

There are also some duck hatching threads to try posting to.

 

[Amiga]

See if you can get help posting here

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1051996/first-duck-hatch-please-help-me-sit-on-my-hands